Thoughts on innovation, product development, engineering, and industrial design

Monday, April 23, 2007

Awake At The Wheel

Earth Day is a few days behind us, but that doesn't mean we're done thinking about responsible product lifecycles, lowering our carbon footprints, and other issues surrounding sustainable development. Clean energy is really at the heart of the whole discussion, with considerable press devoted to it over the past few months. It's one of, if not the hottest, places to invest right now, and it's clear that this train has left the station.

Our friend Rob Elam, CEO of Seattle-based Propel Biofuels maintains a great blog on all things biodiesel by the name of Awake At The Wheel. The purpose is clear, the information is great, and it's on our daily reading list:
Our mission is to provide the most accurate, up to date and practical information to biodiesel drivers. We drive biodiesel, our friends drive biodiesel, and our customers drive biodiesel. That's a lot of biodiesel feedback! Awake at the Wheel is the forum for us to publish this information.

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posted by Finn McKenty at 9:53 AM 0 comments  

Friday, April 13, 2007

Lil' Red Riding Hood

Like many North Americans I thought that traveling in South America would be a distinctly alien and second world experience: busing with livestock through jungles of shantytowns. That point of view was entirely misinformed. A month in Ecuador and Peru showed me a society that resembles the post WW2 United States, a culture that reflects and informs our own, and some uniquely rewarding possibilities for design.

OK. So I wasn't actually around after WW2, or for several decades thereafter, but the image it has projected forward is one of optimism. Optimism based on new homes, new education, and new industry. The small and large cities that I visited in SA were full of new construction. This was funded by family members working abroad and supplemented by an urgent entrepreneurship on the local scene. Most of this entrepreneurship was based in the retail and service trades, but in tandem with a variety of local industries was creating a palpable middle class. This middle class is filling local universities that are molding a new generation of highly educated citizens.

Everyone that I spoke with had relatives that were currently working, legal or not, in the United States. Just as it was common to have an uncle in construction in Chicago; it was a common point of view to see the US as a relative of the speaker's native country. Looking at our own country's native and colonial histories, it is easy to see how we are a branch of the same family. In addition, the rapid rise in the United States of the Latin American as a cultural, political, and economic force makes the connection that we share with our South American cousins clear.

The American Hemisphere is huge and it is impossible to address all of it as a uniform whole. There is, however, a definite connection between its nations and peoples. This connection gives North American designers an advantage when designing for this burgeoning consumer population to our south. Designing products for this new bourgeois will not only reward companies with financial profit, but because of this connection, it will give new insight into ourselves. Why is this insight important?

The better to eat you with, my dear.

posted by RFord at 3:17 PM 0 comments  

Thursday, April 12, 2007

The First Prototype Wins

There is no more effective tool for business communication than a prototype. I'm not the first person to mention the power of prototypes (Seth Godin and IDEO are big proponents), and hopefully I won't be the last. Whether we're talking about a product, service, or idea, there's no substitute for a prototype when it comes to selling your concept.

What's A Prototype?
To be clear, when I say a prototype, I don't necessarily mean a functional "looks like" or "works like" prototype. It could be a lot of things: for a product, maybe it's an animation, a drawing, or a "Frankenstein" model cobbled together out of foamcore and duct tape. If it's a service, maybe you make a short video where you and some other people act out the idea. Production values aren't usually important, the key is that the essence of your idea is immediately clear in some kind of tangible form.

Why Are They So Powerful?
I'm a designer. Designers are great at connecting the dots: imagining things that don't yet exist, thinking in terms of abstract "black boxes" and visualizing things in their head. What designers tend to forget is that most people (marketers, executives, scientists, etc) aren't so good at connecting the dots. That doesn't mean they're dumb, or that they aren't creative, it just means they think differently than designers.

Prototypes are so powerful because they give ideas form. They connect the dots for the audience, which ensures that they don't misinterpret your idea. This seems obvious, but if it was that obvious, we'd all be using prototypes a lot more often.

First Mover Advantage
Notice that I didn't say "the BEST prototype wins," but "the FIRST prototype wins." Prototypes are also powerful because they make an idea seem a lot more real. This matters a lot, because once an idea seems real, it's a lot harder to derail it.

What this means is, don't spend too much time worrying about the details of your prototype. Don't noodle details unless they matter- unless they tell your story. Focus on the big idea, on communicating your vision, not on finessing the prototype. If you're telling the story, you'll be successful.

Start Speaking In Prototypes
From now on, promise yourself to start speaking in prototypes. Before you unveil your ideas, make them real. Make some kind of prototype, and I think you'll be happy with the results.

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posted by Finn McKenty at 7:42 AM 0 comments